Co / Cue Lang Sim-Pu

[SimL]

"Being a (good) daughter-in-law".

Hi all,

I *promise* to post some of these poems soon, it's just that I want to clear up some very basic questions before I do that.

In this poem, two common Hokkien words occur which I cannot find the hanzi for.

1. "jiu5"

This means "to wipe something clean using something wet". For example, if you use a wet cloth to wipe down a table, it's "jiu toh-teng"; if you mop the floor, it's "jiu thoo-kha".

2. "gau5".

This is just "clever" in English.

Thanks all,
Sim.

[ong]

揉 for jiu .
http://140.111.1.40/yitic/frc/frc00649.htm

[SimL]

Very interesting, thanks Ong.

In my variant of Hokkien we also have "jue5" which means "to press", "to rub". So, if you rub your eyes, because you're sleepy or they're itchy, you would say "jue7 bak7-ciu1". Also, if you want to squash an insect to kill it, you might also say "jue5 hoo3 i1 si2".

Is this character 揉 that you gave for "jiu5" also used to write "jue5"?

Thanks,
Sim.

[ong]

挼 is le/lue
揉 is dziu/liu

[Andrew]

Don't think it sounds right, but Douglas-Barclay uses 賢 (lit:hien5) for gau5.

The online Taiwanese dictionary uses the homonym 爻

[ong]

How can you expect Medhurst/Douglas /Campbell to know anything about benzi.There didn't study old chinese dict,the hanzi mainly came from china's minnan dict which have a lot of 方言字 and 俗字.

[Andrew]

Just checked 閩南方言與古漢語同源詞典, which gives [敖 over 力] http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUniha ... utf8=false, citing 《說文》"［敖力］，健也。". I would recommend this book for anyone interested in benzi. The only annoying thing about it is that it is arranged by rhyme, not alphabetically.

[Andrew]

Hong: sometimes if we don't know the 本字, then 方言字 and 俗字 are better than nothing.

[ong]

You don't have to repeat the same hanzi given by me.There are strange benzi like 高 and another from china.
a good dict should show 俗字 ，方言字 ，本字 together like dict by some taiwanese.

[SimL]

Hong: sometimes if we don't know the 本字, then 方言字 and 俗字 are better than nothing.

Andrew, thanks for taking the trouble to try and give an answer to my question. I agree that even when it isn't the "theoretically correct" character, *some* character is better than nothing. One can always leave it up to the person who posed the original question to decide whether or not it is too far from what he/she wants.

Perhaps even in the history of standard Chinese, this has happened. I mean, people have made a mistake, and a character has been "incorrectly" used. After 500-1000 years, it *becomes* the correct character .

Regards,
Sim.